by Adam Corby
The mood passed as suddenly as it had come. The giant shrugged and rumbled a drunken laugh, fell back into the chair and took wine from one of the nude captive women.
‘Your speech is that of one greater than a mere fighting-man,’ he said after a space, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. ‘What are you called?’
‘Ampeánor nal Torvalen, High Charan of Rukor, Imperial Regent to his highness, counselor and envoy of her majesty Allissál, the Divine Queen in Tarendahardil.’
The barbarian lifted his one eyebrow. ‘So? I have heard of you, Rukorian.’ He seemed to consider for a bit. Then he suddenly rose. ‘What is this, you dogs?’ he shouted to his men. ‘And have you kept an Imperial envoy in chains? By dark God, blood will spill for this! Remove them!’
Some hastened to obey. The chains fell clattering to the tiles; Ampeánor’s arms felt suddenly as if they were made of willow. He gazed at the barbarian with astonishment.
The giant handed him the winecup. He looked at it dubiously of a moment, then shrugged and drank. The Postio wine coursed like fire down his throat.
‘Yes, drink, my lord,’ said the barbarian. ‘Drink! I am no barge-robber – had I been, this would have been poison instead of wine! That man is worse than the lowest thief of the tribes; but I am Gen-Karn, and it is with me you deal!’
He grasped him by the shoulders, calling orders to his men: ‘A cloak for the lord of Rukor! Ready a feast in the banquet hall! The Imperial envoy would break his long fast! Charan, I knew not you were from the Holy City. I visited Tarendahardil in my youth, and know of your customs. I am no barge-robber: I have broken with him: here it is Gen-Karn who rules! I am become a civilized man, a true king: King of Tezmon! Speak to me, then, as monarch to monarch.
‘We shall be friends, and allies against the barge-robber! Come and feast! Would you like women? In truth, I think God and Goddess erred, and made our lands differently: for ours breeds up the finest men, but our women are born hard; and yours makes women of your men – but for your women, there is no matching them! And have you really seen the Divine Queen herself, and is she lovely as they say? Often have I dreamed of her, the Goddess with the golden hair, the golden woman of the South! You shall tell me of her while we eat. Ah, if I could but meet her! You, there, wench! More wine!’
Ampeánor, too stunned for word or thought, sat by the barbarian in the banquet hall. And as food was brought he began to eat, ravenously, greedily. It had suddenly been borne in upon him that he was not going to be tortured after all.
* * *
The Gerso’s usual sardonic smile was vanished. He was looking into Allissál’s eyes now gently, even sadly. How he had come to be here in her chambers she did not know; she simply accepted the fact. At the first touch of that strong arm about the small of her back, she slumped into his embrace. Half was she carried into her chambers. She did not know whether he had spoken or not.
She saw Emsha’s cry, and the Gerso’s hand waving her away. He said something, but Emsha did not budge: she did not like the Gerso. Allissál gave her a sign, like a child imitating her parents’ gestures; only then did Emsha stiffly bow and leave the chambers. The great iron clank of the shutting door sounded again, like some word of warning from the lips of her long-voyaged ancestors, too faint to be understood. The two of them were alone.
He took her to the side of the bed and left her there. She swayed gently when his arm left her; but somehow she remained upon her feet. She looked about her at this chamber of hers, quiet and quite dark. With the black hangings across the high, narrow window, the place seemed alien to her, as if it were someplace she had never been.
Beside the table he lighted the lamp and poured two goblets full of wine – purple wine from Postio, and unmixed. One he lifted to his lips and downed in a single, shuddering draught. He wiped his lips along the back of his hand, regarding her. Then he brought the other goblet to her and put it to her mouth.
She was about to protest, but felt the cool wetness at her lips and, unwillingly, swallowed a few drops. Her lips moved clumsily, sucking at the lip of the goblet; most of the wine dribbled down her chin and dripped coldly upon her breasts beneath the thin black linen. He smiled, and wiped her mouth and chin with a cloth. Then he tossed cloth and goblet aside. She heard the dull metallic clank as the goblet struck the stone floor, like the tolling of the bells without.
He put his hand up to her cheek and stroked at the tracks of salt. He reached past, and drew back the covering black mantle, unveiling her bound pinned hair. He put his hand to her throat, where the veins were dully throbbing. He grasped the black linen firmly in his browned muscular fingers, and began, gently, slowly, inexorably, to pull. And the linen began to rip. It tore straightways down her front; from his fist trailed a long, narrow shred of black, wine-soaked linen. It ripped in an even pathway down the front of her robes to below her knees. The long tatter he dropped to the floor. Beneath her knees, the robe was whole down to her naked feet, where he had not bothered to rend it
The two sides of black hung akimbo to either side; down the middle, shining out from beneath the black folds, was exposed her flesh, warmly golden and mysterious in the lamplight. She had worn nothing beneath the robes of mourning; that would have been unseemly. So when she looked down, irresistibly following his own dark gaze, she saw only the inner curve of her breasts, trim, flattened belly, long smooth thighs, and the golden, glowing patch between. She could see the perspiration beginning to bead in the hollow between her soft breasts. The sight of her own nudity, incredibly erotic in its contrast to the plain linen, stirred feelings deep inside her not easily contained. She looked back up at him expectantly, uncomprehendingly. She waited.
He reached up and pulled the pins from the masses of her hair, one after another. There were so many of them that this took some time; but still she did not protest. With each pin or riband pulled free a fresh bunch of hair fell loose, releasing a gust of sweet scent. She was startled at this scent, having put no perfumes in her hair for many passes now. This was the natural aroma of her own hair, smelling of the freshness of new reaped hay. She smelled it in wonder, having never before realized how heady it was.
He smiled at the delight in her widened eyes, and let fall the clattering pins to the floor. He moved closer to her, so close their breaths intermingled. When he put his hand between her thighs, there where she knew her flesh was softest and warmest, she resisted, drawing her knees closely together. Then she ceased resisting and relaxed somewhat. Slowly, tentatively, she felt herself opening, a phalix flower blossoming under expert care. Somewhere within her a feeling, like a string drawn too tightly on a golden lyre, snapped; and she ceased relaxing, and began to respond. When his lips came in contact with hers, she surprised herself with the ferocity and avidity with which her opened lips reached out to grasp and hold him…
He forced her gently back upon the couch, and her torn robes fell openly to either side of her. She no longer heard the bells without, or the city’s women distantly wailing: those sounds were lost beneath his body and the harsh pulsing of his veins caressing her tingling skin. She forgot her grief and all the despair that had shrouded her ever since the coming of the Mersalinal with his news. She forgot her great ambitions, she forgot the impropriety of her actions, she forgot that this was a man she scarcely knew, a penniless adventurer practically from the lands of the barbarians. A roar of blood resounded in her ears, like the sound of the surf on some deserted shore. She remembered, she knew, she felt only passionate release of all the harshly constrained desires of so many, many, many years.
When she cried out in the darkness, her women in the silent chambers below nodded their heads in sympathy and went back to their weeping.
IX
‘The Thunder-Clouds Close O’er’
WHEN MERSALINE FELL, then the corpses heaped the battlefield. Strong-armed barbarians swarmed in triumph up her once fair streets, to share out among themselves, at the chieftains’ overseeing, the last portions of
her beggared wealth. In the distance above the city, thickly wooded and little-traversed hills rose up dull brown against the graying sky. There gathered in sullen packs the last of Mersaline’s defenders, ragged and wretched like once-pampered pet dogs returned to the state of wolves.
From over those hills and the dark horizon heavy clouds rolled over the emerald sky. Out of them a few drops of rain began fitfully to fall, drops of cool, clean water.
The rain was not enough to cleanse the blood-soaked fields, where shadowy figures roamed, picking clean the bodies of the dead. Others in small groups drove wagons and collected the naked corpses of the ravaged dead onto heaps of wood, to burn as well as fitful rain and bloated flesh would allow. The smoke rose curling with the wind and swept toward the city and the faraway South, raining cinders as it passed. The strength of Ara-Karn had passed this way, and left the land as lovely as his soul.
Urna-Val of the Vinkar tribe wiped with his kerchief the grime from his face, and cursed with sour humor the flies as they pestered him about his business. Now and then he would look upon the city and frown. ‘Pox-Face’ he had been called ever since a childhood illness had ravaged his features; and such as he was, could never get those women who might content him save by force or gold – far too much gold for a mere warrior of a lesser tribe. For himself, it would have been enough to lay only a few of the highborn ladies beneath his knees; but that was forbidden now, ever since Gerso. Gerso they had looted and raped and ravaged and burned until not even the rocky earth below her would have owned her. There had been a scene! But such pleasures were rare in life; and Urna-Val had to admit, he had never truly believed they could take that city until Ara-Karn had sundered the towering stone Gates across the pass. Some said he had done it with but a word. Urna-Val shrugged, holding the kerchief over his mouth as he burrowed among bloated limbs. Maybe he should have gone off with the Orns and Gen-Karn to Tezmon, as many of his fellow tribesmen had. Loot was said to be plentiful there. Here Gundoen, the Warlord’s general, ruled with a heavy hand, and had forbidden all looting save that little under the chieftains’ command; and none dared speak against Gundoen, the general, and father to Ara-Karn.
The clouds of smoke and ash drifted over the gray, ugly field, as the slaves burned the bodies of the civilized folk. Urna-Val wiped at his eyes again, spat through his tooth-gap, shouldered his near-empty sack, and went on farther afield of the city.
A suspicious glint attracted him to one of the larger piles. Pickings had been poor this pass, but what he saw now changed all of Urna-Val’s notions of luck: for there before him, almost buried beneath the rotting bodies, he saw a golden breastplate inlaid with silver and gems.
He grunted, looking casually about. The nearest of his fellows was a hundred paces off, and going farther.
Quickly he stooped and pushed the bodies from the pile. He came to the breastplate; but lying directly over it was the great neck of a huge warhorse. Urna-Val swore sourly. He could not hope to drag the horse away unaided, and calling to the others would mean sharing the gold or maybe a fight.
Then his features brightened: and drawing his notched sword and spreading his legs for balance, he began to hack at the carcass of the horse. It was hot and thirsty work, and he’d forgotten to bring a skin of wine; but if he went back for one now someone else might find the breastplate. At the thirty-fifth stroke, he severed the base of the massive neck. Using the truncheon of his sword, he levered the head down the side of the pile, revealing the golden breastplate. Scarcely did he dare look up, lest he see one of his too-curious comrades approaching. Taking out his long-knife, he began cutting free the leather straps that held the breastplate about the corpse.
Then he stopped cutting.
Hands were clutching at his throat: pressing, squeezing, choking him. With a sickening wrench in his belly he saw the corpse raised above him, the maddened eyes glaring directly into his, the dead hands twisting at his neck as if rolling up a sheaf of parchment very tight. Then all went red, then green, then black for Urna-Val of the Vinkar tribe.
* * *
‘Good-waking, Gold.’
‘Good-waking, Jade.’ And she kissed him full upon his opened mouth, relishing the taste of him, sweeter than Delba wine. ‘Again.’
‘Still not satisfied? You will be my death. But now it is late, and you will have to wait.’
She held his arm and pulled him back into the bed. ‘Again,’ she said. ‘It is the Queen’s command.’ He laughed, and touched her.
The great chamber was silent when Emsha entered, some time later. Quietly she stole to the side of the bed and gazed through the shimmering folds of the canopy. The Queen lay at an angle, her golden hair disheveled, her nakedness only partly covered by the rumpled sheets. A peaceful, childlike innocence had settled on her countenance, along with a slightly wicked smile: she peeked up at Emsha through a veil of golden curls. The old nurse looked down sternly at first, but after a moment softened. A noise entered at the high, narrow window of the awakening city; Emsha clucked her tongue, lighted the lamp by the bedside and threw open the canopy.
‘Come, majesty. It is late and the court is waiting.’
The Queen stirred languorously, closing her eyes. Her mouth moved sweetly. She smiled happily at her old nurse. ‘And Ennius?’
‘He is in his chambers in the palace where he belongs, two stories below: I sent him down with Silya. You will catch cold sleeping without a shift.’
‘Oh, I was kept warm enough.’
‘And were you troubled with dreams?’
‘I am far too exhausted now for dreams. What lies before us?’
‘The business of the state, for one. A messenger came with a scroll from the High Regent requesting your majesty’s presence.’
She shook the thick hair out of her eyes and, catlike, stretched her golden arms. ‘Send it back, Emsha. Whatever it is – and no doubt it is only more on these interminable trials – Dornan Ural can attend to it. What purpose does he serve if he does not relieve us of such tedium? What weather is it?’
‘Fine and warm, majesty.’
‘We shall spend our hours in the Garden then, out of these confining walls. Dismiss the court. We haven’t patience to deal with them now. This will be a private party.’
Emsha’s expression was blank as she bent to put on the satin slippers. ‘Yes, majesty.’
* * *
The weather was even as Emsha had said: fine and golden, warm and windless and dry; one of the last lovely spells of autumn before the rains of winter should come. The gardens always died so beautifully. Allissál reclined lazily upon a soft divan, drowsing in the kindly sun as she took her second meal. At her side, rigidly seated on the couch intended for the absent Chara Ilal, was Emsha, uncomfortable to be set so at ease before her mistress.
Allissál smiled. ‘And Ennius will be here?’
‘So he said, majesty. I informed him he was wanted, but he said it would have to wait. He is insolent, majesty.’
She laughed. ‘He only plays at lover’s games, Emsha. Surely you have known of such?’
‘Yes, he plays a great many games, majesty.’
‘Oh, Emsha, you are like some too-stern mother hen. Why do you dislike him so?’ The maidens brought forth the vessels with the second course, setting them before the couches.
‘He is a stranger, your majesty. And I do not like the way he looks at you when he thinks no one else can see.’
‘What way is that, pray?’
‘As if his gaze were a very smith’s flame to burn away the dross of your flesh.’
Again she laughed. ‘Well, that is one flame in which I have been smelted often enough!’
‘He does not love you, majesty.’
‘No,’ she agreed softly, her smile fading. She looked about her, at the pale banks of flowers, denuded of their blossoms. Some birds of passage flew slowly by the mountain, wary of gerlins. Faint sounds arose from the city below, but the branches of the lower groves obscured it from view. ‘Ye
t, Emsha—’ She fell silent again. ‘Emsha, you know something of these affairs, do you not?’
‘Not so very much, majesty. But they told me I was a pretty girl.’
‘It is a saying that bed-play is best when the couple are in love. Emsha, you are wise: is that a truth, or not?’
‘It is an old proverb, majesty. Yet I would say it is still a true one.’
She sighed, avoiding the old nurse’s eyes. ‘Yes, I believe it also. Yet Ennius does not love me, as you have said; nor do I love him. In the way I loved Tarendahardil, or Ampeánor, or Elnavis, I do not even approach loving him. Yet I want him, as I have wanted nothing else: as if I could have so much of him I would choke, and it still would be not enough. I do not even know him. There is a shadow across his heart, makes it unreadable to me: some part of what he has lost, a wildness, a cruelty about him … it only makes me want him all the more. When I see him I am blinded to all else. Yet Ampeánor I knew so well that nothing he ever did was a surprise to me. At times I even doubt his loyalty to Tarendahardil; then I meet him on my couch, and all doubts dissolve. We share such joys it is enough to excite the envy and hostility of dark God, but I do not care. O Emsha, what is happening to me? It is as if he holds some power over me even I do not understand. The North is all but lost, Ampeánor is missing, and my son is dead: how is it I can be so happy?’
The old nurse rose and gazed searchingly into her mistress’s eyes; then stooped and, tenderly, kissed her brow. ‘Dear child,’ she murmured. ‘He is a shadowed soul, your majesty. Yet for this I am grateful to him before all other living men: that he has rescued you from the misery of mourning. If your son is dead, should you also take the voyage? Once I had one dear to me, who was lost: and believe me, such happiness as this of yours is a blessing sent from Goddess. And for that I can tolerate him, and speak no further ill words regarding him. Perhaps it is only the dreadful loss of all his property and loved ones in Gerso that has made him so. And he may find such solace here, will soothe him and allow him to forget.’
